


plot contrivances

by unsungillumination



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Baristas, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Roommates, Sharing a Bed, dumbness, the "i cram as many tropes as possible into one fic" challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 06:45:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17503619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsungillumination/pseuds/unsungillumination
Summary: amamiya ren is an exchange student whose prissy new roommate doesn't seem to want anything to do with him. unfortunately, there's been a mix up at the dorm, and they've been given a double bed instead of two singles.what a contrived set of circumstances that they will surely deal with maturely and sensibly.(or: eight times akeshu were cliche fic tropes, and one time they weren't)





	plot contrivances

**Author's Note:**

> i asked twitter to give me a bunch of cliche fic tropes and then wrote this entire thing on a bus in less than three hours. it is really my magnum opus
> 
> (i will fix the formatting once i am using a machine that doesn't hate me please forgive it in the meantime)

  “Let me make one thing clear,” the haughty, shaggy man informed him, and Ren knew this was not going to be a good year.

  “All I said was ‘nice to meet you’,” Ren pointed out. “You didn’t even let me introduce myself.”'

  The walking tax deduction sniffed.

  “If you’d listen, you’d know what I’m about to say concerns that,” he said primly. “I’m not at school to make friends, I’m here to study. So, for the foreseeable future, I’m not interested in your social activities, nor am I interested in getting to know you any more than I need to. I don’t believe it’s a good idea for roommates to get too close” He smiled suddenly, disarmingly, sending Ren slightly out to sea and also unhappily aware of how pretty this phantom of the administrative office was. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be harsh. I only want to set clear boundaries now so I don’t disappoint you later. I hope we can still get along.”

  “Uh,” said Ren, still off-balance from the sudden shift in demeanour. “Got it.”

  The rubric in human form extended a hand.

  “I’m Akechi Goro,” he said pleasantly. “What were you saying your name was?”

  “Amamiya," said Ren, taking the offered hand and finding himself worried about the firmness of his handshake for the first time in his life. “Amamiya Ren. Um... it’s acceptable to meet you.”

  Akechi laughed. “I see you get the idea,” he said, the picture of charm all at once. He released Ren and pushed open the door to their new apartment area. “I hope you don’t think poorly of me for wanting to keep to myself.”

  “Uh,” Ren said, peering into apartment. Akechi paid him no mind, still gazing sweetly at him without, apparently, really looking at him.

  “I believe we can remain perfectly civil even in the absence of a close relationship,” he continued. “I know it may be disappointing to you, since you seem to have wanted to befriend me, but hopefully you will come to know the merits of a healthy distance –”

  “Akechi,” Ren interrupted, and Akechi blinked, as if annoyed to be forced to acknowledge his audience as a person rather than a pair of ears.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Ren gestured into the apartment, and was granted the brief pleasure of observing the look on Akechi’s face when he realised that their ‘double room’ was, in fact, one bedroom with a single double bed.

  “Distance might be a little hard,” he said, and wondered if Yusuke would call Akechi’s face mauve or eggplant.

 

* * *

 

  “So, how are you finding it here?” Makoto prodded him, legs crossed at the bar. “I know it’s been difficult, moving interstate, but I hope you’ve been enjoying it so far.” Ren paused halfway through polishing a coffee cup to offer her a dramatic sigh. She laughed. “Have classes not been going well?”

  “Classes are fine,” Ren assured her.

  “So? What is it?” Makoto made a noise like she’d just remembered something. “Oh! How’s your roommate?”

  Ren made a noncommittal sound, and a face.

  “Is he not nice?” she asked, and he shrugged.

  “He’s nice,” Ren said. “There are... circumstances.”

  Makoto waited.

  “His name is Akechi,” Ren said, but this didn’t seem to mean anything to Makoto. “He doesn’t really want to talk to me much.”

  “Well, that’s not so bad,” she reasoned. “I’ve heard of worse roommates.”

  Ren nodded. “And we’re sleeping together,” he added, and ducked behind the coffee machine to explain before Makoto could rain the wrath of responsibility on him.

 

* * *

 

  “We’ve been sent profound apologies,” Akechi announced upon entering the apartment, and Ren scrambled to cover his embarrassing boxers with a throw pillow. “That’s my pillow.”

  “Yes,” said Ren, mortified, “and these are my underwear, and you open the door way too quietly.”

  Akechi politely didn’t roll his eyes. “I’ve spoken to the dorm authorities. We’ve received apologies and promises to amend the issue as soon as possible, which means it’s going to be a while.” He stared at the lone bed with a kind of murderous politeness that made Ren suddenly very glad he wasn’t a mattress. “Why should it take so long to fix a mistake like this, on their part to begin with?”

  “Plot contrivances,” Ren suggested, trying to covertly pluck stray popcorn pieces from the sofa cushions and tip them back into the empty bag while Akechi was absorbed in convoluted plans to find and kill the person responsible.

  “What? I see you with that popcorn, by the way,” and Ren closed his eyes in defeat. “I’d appreciate it if you kept that space clean, since we’re swapping tomorrow.”

  “The couch is still mine until midnight,” Ren protested. “It’ll be popcorn free at the stroke of twelve, I promise. Besides, it’s super uncomfortable anyway. Crumbs won’t help.”

  Akechi curled his lip. “They certainly won’t. These circumstances are – regrettable, but I’m sure we can count on the lodging staff to take care of it soon.”

  “They won’t,” said Ren, who had more popcorn than he had faith in authority.

  “No, they won’t,” Akechi said grimly, and Ren felt a faint bonding moment in shared distaste.

 

* * *

 

  “Hi, how can I help – you?” Ren stopped himself from yelping and contented himself with an undignified gawp as Akechi, slightly ruffled, adjusted his collar. “Uh, hi.”

  “I didn’t know you worked here,” Akechi said stiffly. “I’ve been coming to this place for months.”

  Ren laughed nervously. “I’m new. Don’t worry, they’re showing me the ropes... I make good coffee, you know.”

  “Is that so,” said Akechi.

  “I’d make you some at home,” said Ren, “if you didn’t have that food-sharing rule.”

  “No unnecessary closeness, Amamiya. We have to deal with enough as it is.”

  “What can I get you?” Ren asked, very aware of his perky blonde co-worker, whose ear had just grown three sizes at the prospect of gossip about his life.

  “Latte, regular.” Akechi rattled off a series of special requests and adjusted his collar again as he handed over the exact change.

  Ren nodded and set about making the drink. “Um, so... You’re a regular?”

  The look Akechi shot him told him to stop making small talk at once, but he nodded and said, “Yes, the coffee is good and the staff leave me alone, for the most part.”

  _Ouch_. Ren handed over the coffee without another word, and Akechi nodded at him and took it to a little table in the corner, where he set up his laptop without mentioning how Ren had foregone the little smiley face in the foam.

  Maybe he didn’t notice.

  Akechi had noticed this morning when Ren had done his dishes slightly differently from usual. More likely he just didn’t care.

 

* * *

 

  After about the third of Akechi’s inexplicably cheery friends, Ren started to understand his 'no friends’ policy.

  “I hate break,” Akechi growled. Ren looked at him and he amended, slightly defensively, “Well, I don’t have anywhere to go. I just have to sit here and tolerate well-meaning idiots.”

  “You seem to like them,” Ren offered. For the life of him he couldn’t figure out where Akechi had acquired so many peppy blond friends, but first off there had been a loud boy with bad posture who’d introduced himself as Sakamoto: a teaching-and-sports-science major with a bad leg who seemed so much the opposite of Akechi that Ren couldn’t even conceive of how they might have met.

  Then there was Ren’s cheerful co-worker, Takamaki, who apparently was Akechi’s best friend, and had spent a respectable amount of time interrogating a slightly frightened Ren about Akechi's sleeping  habits, wrapped the man himself in a hug and somehow escaped alive, and flown out the door again.

  And then it had been Sakura, who seemed to be Akechi’s self-appointed little sister figure, and who knew a frankly unnerving amount about Ren and the grimy details of his personal life. And about Featherman R also, which Ren was now being extorted into watching.

  By the time Akechi closed the door after his eccentric unsister, he looked exhausted, and Ren couldn’t blame him.

  But now, pondering Ren’s words, a tiny smile quirked his lip and spoke to a tired sort of fondness which made Akechi seem years younger and leagues softer, and Ren was reminded again of how distressingly attractive he was. Ren shook himself.

  And then there came another knock at the door.

  Akechi all but growled “what _now_ ” and yanked it open to reveal a slight, fluffy slip of a girl with a massive basket of vegetables in tow.

  “Goro-kun!” she squealed, ignoring the stormclouds on his face and dropping the basket to the floor with a _thud_ to throw her arms around him. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I had to come see you. I brought you some veggies. How have you been?”

  “Haru,” Akechi said, softening very slightly. “It’s nice to see you. Thank you for the vegetables, they look lovely...”

  “Oh!” Haru chirped, noticing Ren. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know Goro-kun's roommate was still home! Hello, I’m Okumura – it’s nice to meet you.”

  _Like Okumura Foods?_ Ren shook her hand in a slight daze, wondering more than ever about Akechi’s eclectic group of friends. “Amamiya. Nice to meet you too.”

  Okumura pottered around the kitchen a moment, berating Akechi for his eating habits, which he copped with an indulgent smile. Then her eye caught on the open bedroom door and the mess inside it and nudged it open, saying, “Oh, Goro-kun, you should really tidy up in –” and stopped at once when her gaze caught on Ren's guitar, his name scrawled across the strap.

  _Here we go again_.

  Okumura backed up a little, eyes wide and mortified, and said, “Amamiya-san, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise this was your room -” and stopped again when her eyes fell on a stack of books that was unmistakably Akechi's. “But... Those...”

  “Haru,” Akechi said, looking like he’d aged ten years. Akechi seemed a very private person, and Ren was still kind of surprised he’d let his friends wander so freely, but that afternoon alone all three of Akechi’s friends had shoved their way into the bedroom one way or another, forcing Akechi to explain wearily again and again the mix-up with the bed; that no, he had no idea how it had happened; yes, they were working on it, _allegedly_ ; _no_ , he had no idea when it would be fixed; and _NO_ , they were not sharing the bed.

  Akechi seemed to be gearing up to launch into this explanation for a fourth time, but Ren was about as tired of hearing it as Akechi seemed to be of telling it.

  So he turned to a very round-eyed Okumura and said, “Goro-kun and I are dating,” and was left to decide whether Haru's squeak of delight or Goro's furious choking sound was louder.

 

* * *

 

  “I said sorry.”

  “And I told you, that’s not good enough.”

  Ren sighed. “You didn’t have to go along with it. We could have played it off.”

  Goro, in evident panic, had actually yanked Ren over by the shoulder in a somewhat painful grip (not that Ren would complain, being in quite enough hot water as it was) and said in a strained and dramatically cheerful voice that Ren was right, and then kissed him right on the cheek, which had left Ren unspeakably flustered and Haru fit to bursting with happiness.

  The apartment had then descended into deeply uncomfortable silence upon Haru's departure.

  “I panicked,” Goro snapped now, wringing his hands. “No doubt she’s off spreading this – Ann’s going to blow up my phone accusing me of lying to her – what could _possibly_ have possessed you to think this might be a good idea?!”

  Ren shrugged.

  “Plot contrivances,” he suggested weakly, and Goro threw a pillow at him.

 

* * *

 

  (They decided to go along with it, for ease of explanation.)

  (Ren promptly decided there was simply no worse time to be a raging bisexual.)

 

* * *

 

  “Do I still have to sleep on the couch?” Ren asked meekly, and Goro graced him with seven full seconds of the murder glare before picking up one pillow from the head of the bed and slamming it at the foot and declaring that if they were going to share, they at _least_ would not be sleeping truly side by side, and Ren figured that was probably the best deal he was going to get.

 

* * *

 

  “Remember when I said I wasn’t actually sleeping with him,” Ren asked, and ducked when Makoto immediately figured out where this was going and chucked a spoon at him over the counter.

 

* * *

 

  Goro had begun coming into the café more and more, and Ren was now permitted to speak with him for the sake of their arrangement. He was also allowed one pet name per visit, a right which in truth he only asked for to see Goro’s face when he heard it.

  He had also befriended Takamaki (Ann, she insisted), who took great pleasure in watching Goro's behaviour in a relationship. Kind of like an anthropological study, she informed Ren happily, if chimpanzees wore sweater vests and were emotionally constipated.

  “Kinda nice to watch him fling his emotion poop at you,” she’d said happily, and left him to mull this image over.

  Ren had, by this time, memorised Goro's long and ridiculous coffee order, which Goro seemed quietly pleased by. He had also started sharing his coffee and cooking at home, which Goro also seemed reluctantly grateful for; it turned out that Goro, as stuffy and refined as he might have seemed, subsisted on a diet of mostly instant ramen. Which Ren could respect.

  “Try some curry,” he’d offered anyway, and Goro had taken a tentative spoonful and then devoured Ren’s dinner in its entirety.

  (As a result of this, Ren was now entitled to Goro’s full supply of gourmet ramen packets.)

  Life at home was now much more relaxed than it had been at the commencement of the year, and while Goro still refused to call them friends, Ren felt a friendly comradery between them every time Goro’s eyes crinkled in an easy smile, or when Goro padded yawning into the living room in his sleep shirt instead of emerging fully groomed from the bathroom like a rude butterfly, or deigned to let Ren eat popcorn on the couch.

  It was rapidly becoming a problem, however, that Ren now found himself counting the minutes until the next time Goro laughed.

 

* * *

 

  Goro was in love with Ann, Ren had decided. Ren had never been more certain of anything in his life, probably. The signs were clear. Goro laughed more around Ann than he did around anyone else, smiled every time she cracked a terrible joke, would permit her hugs with soft eyes and had even kissed her head once.

  Except sometimes it was maybe Okumura. Goro was gentler around her than anyone, encouraged her and nudged her gently to confide in him and watched with kind attention whenever she spoke, and would pat her gently on the back if ever she flung her arms around him. The _only_ explanation, Ren decided, was true love.

  On other days still, it had to be Sakamoto – everything pointed to it. There was no rhyme or reason to this, Ren thought, except that _there was no rhyme or reason to this_ , that Sakamoto was so vastly in opposition with everything Goro stood for that there must have been some _non-logical reason_ that Goro hung around him at all. Friendship was not quite rational and neither then was love, even less still, so it must have been that which led Goro to tolerate with a resigned grin Sakamoto's loud voice and the hard slaps to his back. Sakamoto would storm in with his shoes still on and leave a mess in his wake, throw open the fridge without permission, and leave rings on all the wooden furniture. Goro tolerated all this with a roll of his eyes and a thousand proffered coasters.

  Sakamoto already called Ren by his first name while having apparently forgotten to extend him the same courtesy.  Ren couldn’t help but like him.

  Ann, Okumura, Sakamoto. Each day brought a different theory, each as promising and deeply founded as the last. Of course Ren could simply ask Goro which of his friends he had feelings for, but Goro would never let a question like that slide without asking why, or worse, figuring it out himself.

 

* * *

 

  “Let’s have a sleepover,” Ren suggested one night, very much against his better judgement.

  “We sleep in the same bed,” Goro pointed out.

  “Yeah, but that’s not what a sleepover is.”

  “What is it, then?”

  Ren shrugged. “Popcorn. Star Wars. We can talk about girls.” Ren was not good at fishing.

  Goro, who had perked up at _Star_ _Wars_ , actually looked slightly tempted. “That reminds me. Ann got us gifts when she got back from abroad.”

  “Oh yeah? That’s nice of her.” Ren tried to look offhand at the prospect of exciting new gifts.

  Goro rifled through a bag under his desk and took out two fuzzy piles.

  “She called them Kigurumis,” he said, with a brave attempt at offhand distaste, and a grinning Ren snatched the black cat from his left hand, leaving him with the fuzzy green dinosaur.

 

* * *

 

  “I’m depressed,” Ren complained, lounging over Yusuke's couch.

  Yusuke scrawled another few lines across his sketchpad, frowning at Ren for moving.

  “You’re not depressed, you’re pathetic,” he said conversationally.

  “Oh damn, you’re right.” Ren threw an arm over his eyes, ignoring Yusuke's pained howl. “I’m naked and I miss my cat.”

  “That’s not why you’re pathetic,” Yusuke informed him, and Ren sighed dramatically and froze in place for the remainder of the sketch.

 

* * *

 

  “Are you in love with Ann?” Ren asked, Kigu-clad at the ninth of their now weekly sleepovers, tired and having consumed one too many alcoholic substances, and Goro choked on his cruiser and spluttered, “Absolutely _not_!”

  “Then who?” Ren demanded. “Is it Okumura?”

  “ _Haru_? God, no.”

  “Sakam-”

  “Don’t even finish that.”

  Ren heaved a very dramatic, very inebriated sigh. “Then _who_?”

  “Why must there be someone?” Goro asked, picking at the label of his drink.

  “Because I like you,” Ren whined, “and I want to know whose fault it is that I can’t kiss you.”

  Goro choked on his drink again.

  “Goroo,” Ren said, liking how it sounded. “Gorogorogoro.”

  “I think you’ve had enough,” Goro said stiffly, and removed Ren’s drink from his grabby hands.

  There was a brief haze as Goro shoved him into bed and set a glass of water and an aspirin at the bedside table, and Ren fell asleep to what felt like Goro gently patting back his hair in his fluffy cat hood.

 

* * *

 

  The next morning, the only memento of the night before that his head was granting him was a splitting pain. Ren slumped over the bench and groaned, “Yusuke was right.”

  “Drink this,” said a soft voice, and a cup of coffee was slipped in front of him.

  Ren looked up. Goro was busying himself about the kitchen and not looking at him.

  Creeping dread in his chest, Ren said, “Hey, did I say anything dumb last night?”

  “You have nothing to worry about,” Goro said.

  Ren thought he could see a little dust of pink across Goro's cheeks when he set a plate of waffles in front of him and wondered if he was imagining the shy look in Goro's eyes.

 

* * *

 

  (In a matter of weeks, they withdrew their request to exchange the bed, which administration had forgotten about anyway.)  


**Author's Note:**

> the list:
> 
> \- and they were roommates  
> \- there's only one bed!  
> \- exchange student/loner (ok this got twisted)  
> \- coffee shop au  
> \- fake dating  
> \- miscommunication re: assuming the other person has a partner  
> \- i added drunk confessions
> 
> plus another non-cliche prompt, which was akeshu have a sleepover with kigus :3
> 
> thanks hope you liked it and if you take this fic seriously i WILL cover myself in fish and cry


End file.
